Minimum Wage: Do you believe raising the minimum wage floor to $15/hour is both ethical and responsible, given the implications regarding the rising cost of living and the threat of substitution of machines for labor?

Minimum Wage: Do you believe raising the minimum wage floor to $15/hour is both ethical and responsible, given the implications regarding the rising cost of living and the threat of substitution of machines for labor?

A changing economy requires changes to the minimum wage

The world is vastly different now than it was when the minimum wage was first established. Increases in the amount of the wage should take into consideration the difficulties families face in today's unstable economy and competitive environment. To pay for education, proper nutrition, and further improve their quality of life, workers need a new minimum wage.

Raising the Minimum Wage is Both Ethical and Responsible

Not only is raising the minimum wage the right thing to do, raising millions of hard working Americans from poverty, but it is the logical and responsible thing to do for the health and growth of the economy. Workers who make more money spend more money. It's as simple as that and it's good for the economy. The Bogeyman of replacing people with robot workers has been trotted out ever since I can remember. Although certain functions can be handled by machines, humans will always be needed to serve humans, and using this as an excuse or a threat to keep workers in poverty is reprehensible.

Minimum wage needs to be at an acceptable level

It can only be ethical to raise the minimal wage floor - $15 an hour is still too low an amount if you ask me for people to live on. People have a right to a decent standard of living and therefore a decent and responsible minimum wage should be set.

It's a good idea.

Minimum wage would not increase prices due to competition. If McDonald's raised prices Burger King would find a way to keep them down and take all the customers. For this reason, no one will want to raise prices. Also, companies are not run in an inefficient way. If machines could perform these jobs, they would already have them. The only reason anyone disagrees is because the rich want to not pay it because they would make less money themselves.

Prices have kept rising.

I don't know about $15 (companies may think their labor costs are too great, too big an increase at once for them, and be compelled to raise prices and/or cut jobs) but at least $10. Prices of groceries, gasoline and many other things have done much rising over the years. Wages in general need to be raised. The cost of living gets hard for the poor and middle class. Higher wages need to somehow be achieved without prices being raised. Besides, the increase in wages would be in response to inflation that has happened, to bring people's income up to the cost of living. Higher wages should cause people to spend more, giving businesses more revenue. It may be unnecessary to increase profit by raising prices. Hopefully. It's a win-win situation -- people have more income to buy goods and services, and companies have more revenue from consumer spending that would make up for the increased cost of labor.

Bad for Stocks and small businesses

Sure the big companies like McDonalds and Walmart are profiting billions each year off their products. But raising the minimum wage to $15 is a huge and unstable jump. This would cause stock prices to dip. In addition, prices in store goods will rise. Small businesses would have a hard time surviving and competing. They would need to lay off many workers to stay in business. You're not supposed to be able to survive only on minimum wage. There's a reason why it's called minimum wage. It's "unskilled" labor. If you want to live a better life, learn some new skills. It may be ethical to raise it, but it's implications will cause more damage and inflation.

This would speed the move to machines

Whether or not to replace a person with a machine depends on the cost of that person. If you double the cost of minimum wage positions, you will increase the rate of replacement by machines. I do think current minimum wage is too low and declining w/o being linked to inflation, but doubling all at once is too dramatic an increase.

It will only have a negative effect on the economy.

If we raise minimum wage to $15 an hour it will only furthermore decrease the value of the dollar because fast-food companies and others are greedy. $15 an hour is more than double what the minimum wage is now at $7.25 an hour. Therefore, if they have to pay their workers double then their prices will either double or almost double. This will make the value of a dollar plum it as food and other product's price will soar. $15 an hour is an outrageous gamble. They should raise to a more reasonable number like $8 or $9 an hour. It is only ethicial and responsible to not raise it to $15 and crash the economy.

No just this is just plain stupid.

If one was to raise minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour then the prices of everything else would raise and cause every thing to go back to square one. A lot of people say raising it can get people to get more things not true everything would take the same amount of time due to price raises.

No, It Could Be Catastrophic

Raising the minimum wage floor to $15/hr would only result in an exponential price increase on all goods. To raise this minimum wage would be irresponsible toward the already struggling working class. Furthermore, it would be disrespectful to those who actively serve in the military, being that military personnel make less than minimum wage in some cases.

No, it is not ethical.

The only reason that the minimum raise should be raised is if the demand for the work, and the skill of the job, is also raised. These jobs are mostly entry positions and are typically unskilled. These jobs were not meant to support a family of four. Increasing the minimum wage by so much will force companies to raise prices and thus rendering the raise useless for workers because all of their raise will be spent on the rising prices of goods.